Sukhdev Singh Bainiwal, a 42-year-old software engineer from the Evergreen area of San Jose, knows what it's like to feel less American than others. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he was accosted by strangers and told to "go home" because, as a Sikh, he wears a turban.

But Bainiwal senses that America has become a more tolerant place since those scary days. And he was thrilled when his 17-year-old son, an Obama supporter, went to work as a poll worker, wearing his turban.

With Obama's election, Bainiwal said, "more barriers will continue to fall. People will vote for people based on the skills and knowledge that they have and what they stand for — and not because of the way they look." [Link]

Canadians could be forgiven for thinking veiled Muslim women pose an urgent threat to the integrity of our electoral system after Prime Minister Stephen Harper made one of his first priorities in the fall sitting of Parliament a bill to force voters to show their faces at the polls.

But there is not one shred of evidence that such a problem existed in the first place. Even Harper's Conservative government has admited "there was no apparent case of fraud" in three federal by-elections that were held in September in Quebec, when unjustified hysteria over veiled Muslim women first boiled over.

Yet that has not stopped Harper from trying to fix this imaginary problem by proposing changes to the country's election law that would require voters to show their faces before they cast their ballots. The opposition parties are just as guilty of stirring up this issue, even though the Liberals and NDP now appear less enthusiastic about the measure than they did only a month ago.

Harper has tried to dress up the bill as a means to "enhance public confidence in the democratic process." But it has nothing to do with electoral integrity and everything to do with pandering to narrow-minded fears about minorities, particularly in Quebec where a troubling debate over "reasonable accommodation" is now raging.

Glaring inconsistencies in the proposed legislation only highlight that Harper and other federal politicians are shamefully playing cheap politics at the expense of Canadian Muslims.

For one thing, the bill does little to achieve Harper's stated goal of improving the visual identification of voters. Voters are still not required to show photo identification in order to vote. They can present two pieces of non-photo ID approved by Elections Canada instead.

One acceptable combination is a debit card and a bank statement, neither of which contains a photo, age or physical description. In that case, showing your face might prevent you from voting twice, but does nothing to establish who you are in the first place.

Nor does it prove anything to show your face while being vouched for by another voter, another method of getting a ballot.

At the same time, Canadians temporarily living overseas who vote by mail do not have to show their faces to election officials. Approximately 80,000 people mailed in their ballots in the 2006 election. Why isn't Harper worried about them?

By singling out veiled Muslim women, Harper and others have seized on one of the most visible signs of difference in our multicultural society in order to make a point: If minorities want to exercise all their rights as Canadians citizens, they need to act more like "us."

Absent real security concerns, Harper is sacrificing the openness and inclusiveness on which this country was built in order to appeal to the ethnic prejudices of a few. That is not the Canadian way.

When it comes up for debate in the House of Commons, opposition parties should take a stand against fearmongering and intolerance by voting against this odious bill. [Link]

Critics pan legislation that will require all federal voters to show their faces

The Harper government yesterday introduced legislation requiring all voters -- including veiled Muslim women -- to show their faces before being allowed to cast ballots in federal elections.

Peter Van Loan, the minister responsible for democratic reform, said he hopes the bill will settle the potentially corrosive debate over the accommodation of diverse religious beliefs.

But Opposition parties and some Muslim groups suggested it will do just the opposite -- giving a national forum to a heated debate that has provoked some anti-immigrant sentiment in Quebec.

Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff said while he supports requiring all voters to identify themselves, "what I don't like about this whole project is the idea that we take a bunch of women wearing veils and we make a whole big deal about this ... Let's not have politicians fishing around and creating divisions between Canadians about this."

Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress said the law is unnecessary and will feed discrimination against Muslim Canadians.

He suggested the Tories are hoping to make "political mileage among Islamophobes." [Link]

All three front-runners in Monday's provincial election protested a decision by Elections Canada to allow Muslim women to cover their faces while they vote.

Liberal Leader Jean Charest requested on Thursday to have the decision reversed that would allow Muslim women to wear their niqab or burqa while casting their ballots....

Elections Canada said Muslim women will be allowed to wear the niqab, which leaves only a woman's eyes visible, if they sign a sworn statement attesting to their identity, show two pieces of identification and are accompanied by someone who can vouch for their identity. [Link]